“Oh, you know, they just treated us like we were living inThe Virgin Suicides.”
Liza keeled over with laughter but Kenna’s stony expression insisted the comment was devoid of humor. Quiet fell over them and killed the conversation and they refocused their attention on the show.
One of the contestants vented about her jealousy as a result of being excluded from a group date and Kenna channeled that feeling herself, mind retracing its exhausted path back to the woman in the sports car.
The violent resentment she’d felt when Dayton had gotten into the car and it sped off out of sight.
Carmen dropped to her knees upon the trail’s end, where it opened up to a two-lane highway lined with pines on either side. A fog clung to the treetops amid the gray sky.
It was the same path he and Kenna had run on the 5K.
If he stayed in any one place too long, everything came back to him. Falling to the dirt, all of the strength leaving his body. The helplessness and shame that had wracked him in equal measure. Kenna’s lithe figure growing smaller as she sprinted away from him, reducing her fiery ponytail to a blur of color amid the woods’ neutrality.
He’d lost track of the number of times he’d revisited the trail, running through the pines and remembering what it was like to have her jogging alongside him. He felt a powerful pull to the sight where they’d coasted within the forest’s natural beauty. And now he seemed determined to end his life in the very place she had saved it.
Carmen hadn’t known about the incident until after the fact. Dayton returned home to a swarm of concerned voicemails, worried out of her wits that she had not heard from him in days, and was more or less coerced into telling her everything—leaving out the very delicate detail that he owed his life to a student of the university at which he was employed.
Previously employed, at this juncture.
Carmen’s hard, labored breathing made him refocus.
“I better be in the best shape of my life when I go back home after what you’ve put me through. Do you do this shit every day?”
“Every day you’re here.” She shot him a glare and Dayton smirked into the mouth of his thermos before taking a drink. He replaced the lid and dropped it beside his panting sister. “Hydrate.”
He joined her in the damp earth, stretching as she guzzled the water like it was the last of it on the planet. When she finished, a few drops trickled down her chin, wasted. She tried to mimic his stretches but her form was all wrong. Maybe she’d lied about those yoga classes, just another fictional tidbit that she thought made her life more interesting. Evidential proof Los Angeles had gone to her head.
“How are things with Gia?”
“Good. Great. I’ve been thinking about asking her to move in but I’m never home. Maybe it’s pointless.”
“You should ask her. If you’re passive, she’ll slip away.”
“You’re the last person who should be dishing out relationship advice.” She ripped the elastic out of her sweat-drenched hair and it fell around her angular face. “Please tell me you don’t run by yourself when I’m not around.”
The protective though condescending inquiry was Carmen’s way of touting that she was the eldest by three minutes.
“Mind your business.” His tone was more flat than demanding.
She seized Dayton’s wrist as he flexed his hamstrings and his eyes snapped to her. Her breath still burst in and out, as if she couldn’t catch it. “Are you trying to kill yourself? Answer me, honestly.”
“I know what I can handle.”
“You’re a survivor, Dayton. You’re strong, but running without a partner? You know what’s at stake.”
“And you aren’t qualified to make any kind of medical judgment,” he snapped.
Carmen rose to her feet, arms akimbo as she looked down at her twin. “By the grace of God, you’ve made it 38 years. It’s stupid to put yourself at risk.”
He brushed past her toward the Taycan, calling over his shoulder, “If your nagging hasn’t killed me, Caramello, I think I’m safe from any cardiac malfunction.”
Once Dayton climbed in the car, he checked his phone. No messages. He wanted to reach out to Kenna, call her, send her a text, but he lacked any justifiable reason to do so; unless it was to saddle her with busy work, transcribing analysis notes and the like. He remembered how overworked he’d felt during his first semester of grad school and he decided the brief contact would not be worth dumping extra responsibility on her. Plus, she’d recently aired her disgust toward him. It was best to avoid the temptation of cellular communication and hold out for Monday.
“I caught a peek of your new assistant,” Carmen said once they were en route to the house. “She’s a pretty little thing.”
“Nice try. I’m not biting.”
His grip tightened on the wheel. She didn’t know anything about Kenna and it was better off that way.